Now a CBS All Access series: "A riveting tale of rocketry, the occult, and boom-and-bust 1920s and 1930s Los Angeles" (Booklist).

The Los Angeles Times headline screamed: ROCKET SCIENTIST KILLED IN PASADENA EXPLOSION. The man known as Jack Parsons, a maverick rocketeer who helped transform a derided sci-fi plotline into actuality, was at first mourned as a scientific prodigy. But reporters soon uncovered a more shocking story: Parsons had been a devotee of the city's occult scene.

Fueled by childhood dreams of space flight, Parsons was a leader of the motley band of enthusiastic young men who founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a cornerstone of the American space program. But Parsons's wild imagination also led him into a world of incantations and orgiastic rituals -- if he could make rocketry a reality, why not black magic?

George Pendle re-creates the world of John Parsons in this dazzling portrait of prewar superstition, cold war paranoia, and futuristic possibility. Peopled with such formidable real-life figures as Howard Hughes, Aleister Crowley, L. Ron Hubbard, and Robert Heinlein, Strange Angel explores the unruly consequences of genius.

The basis for a new miniseries created by Mark Heyman and produced by Ridley Scott, this biography "vividly tells the story of a mysterious and forgotten man who embodied the contradictions of his time... when science fiction crashed into science fact... [It] would make a compelling work of fiction if it weren't so astonishingly true" (Publishers Weekly).

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• HistoryAmericasUnited StatesState & LocalWest
• Science & MathAstronomy & Space ScienceAstrophysics & Space Science
• Biographies & MemoirsProfessionals & AcademicsScientists
• HistoryAmericas
• HistoryUnited StatesState & LocalWest
• Religion & SpiritualityOccultOccultism

• Publication Date: February 6, 2006
• Text-to-Speech: Disabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 380 Pages
• File Size: 66 KB